Shooting World Championships: Mehuli Ghosh going to Paris after bronze finish

Baku, August 19

Young shooter Mehuli Ghosh clinched a quota place for India at next year’s Paris Olympics after winning a bronze medal in the women’s 10m air rifle event at the ISSF World Championships here today.

I was very excited and nervous for the final. In fact, I can still feel the nerves. There was very little difference between each one of us. It was very exciting and I am happy with the result. Mehuli Ghosh

The 22-year-old from Kolkata also teamed up with Tilottama Sen and Ramita to win the 10m air rifle team competition with a combined total of 1,895.9, ahead of China (1893.7) and Germany.

Mehuli shot a 229.8 in the final to ensure a podium finish behind Chinese duo Jiayu Han (251.4) and Zhilin Wang (250.2). In the air rifle, the top three shooters are guaranteed Olympics quota places.

India have won three Paris quota places till now.

However, Divyansh Singh Panwar, Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar and Hriday Hazarika failed to fire in the the men’s 10m air rifle events.

Together, they managed to aggregate 1,878.4 points to finish 10th in the team event. While Divyansh scored a 627.5, Aishwary and Hridaya notched up scores of 627.3 and 623.6.

China took gold with a world record score 1,893.3, followed by the Czech Republic (1884.3) and Croatia (1883.5).

In the individual category too, Divyansh finished a distant 28th in the qualification round, while Aishwary and Hriday were 33rd and 68th, respectively. Only the top-eight shooters qualify for the finals.

A day after their fellow shooters won a gold medal, India capped a disappointing show in the men’s skeet.

The skeet team, comprising Angad Veer Singh Bajwa (121), Anant Jeet Singh Naruka (120) and Gurjoat Khangura (115), finished 14th with an overall score of 356 after five rounds of qualification spanning two days.

This came a day after Shiva Narwal and Esha Singh clinched gold in the 10m air pistol mixed team event.

USA’s Vincent Hancock (125), Christian Elliott (123) and Dustan Taylor (121) claimed the team gold with an incredible 369, which was 13 shots ahead of the Indians.

In the individual category, in which the scores from the five rounds of 25 shots each are counted towards qualifying for the six-shooter final, none of the three Indians were placed in the top-25. Bajwa (121) finished 29th, while Naruka (120) was 44th and Khangura (115) was 95th